I was quite surprised to see that the temperature of my Western Digital 500 GB harddisk in my DS-106x was 59 degrees Celsius (room temperature ~22C, and yes, enough space around the box). Most harddisk producers specify a maximum operating temperature of 55C or 60C. I measured it with this command:
smartctl -A /dev/hda | grep "Temperature_Celsius" | awk '{ print $10 }'
(smartctl comes from the package smartmontools from nslug2).
After installing and fasten to the case an external, 12V powered 12cm-fan, the temperature got down to 39C. There are many instructions around with photos and variants about how to do this; just look at the forums or google. BTW, can anyone tell me, how to get the temperature of the mainboard? I suppose it involves using the package lm-sensors and perhaps a specific kernel module; has anyone done this?
I think the internal fan and ventilation/cooling system of the DS-Series is insufficient, at least for the DS-106 models; and I wonder how the CS-406 models do. May I suggest to the syno-folks:
- Synology should point to this issue. Harddisk life may be shorter than expected when running at max. allowed temperatures or above.
- there should be a display of the actual HD-temperature on the status-page of the web-admin, changing color to red above 50C
- Synology could sell a nice external fan package, to easily mount on the case and perhaps powered by 5V from USB
Best regards, Manuel
